Open Road

As my homework load piles up, I suddenly am finding time to look through photos. Here are some pictures from the trip home from California. Wyoming is a pretty amazing place to drive through...

Doesn't that view make life seem absolutely full of opportunities?

If only I were living out on the open range chilling with my cattle right now...instead of at my desk with homework I should be doing.....

We ate lunch on top of the truck, somewhere in the Middle-of-Nowhere, WY. It was perfect.

And on a final note. Isn't God absolutely amazing? Things like this don't happen by accident.

Rewind

We've been in California for over two weeks now, but I told myself I was going to actually use my blog more this summer. So I'm going to rewind to the front end of our journey out here, and then hopefully eventually catch up to where we are now.

Here we are at my parents' house. We headed out at about 7am, with the truck packed and Zach's homemade bike rack strapped to the back :)

Here are some random pictures of scenery along the way. We drove through everything from intense heat to blizzard conditions. Guess that's what happens when you drive cross country!

This place was beautiful. Zach and I both agreed we could live in this valley :)

The Salt Lakes....Zach and I were not too impressed. It was kind of stinky and salty.

One of the many spectacular view from the dash.

I drove through mini-blizzard #1....Maybe in Nevada?

Landscape just past the mini-blizzard.

At the tail end of our journey we had to cross the Sierra Nevada. We thought we were going to easily make the home stretch--but no. A few miles up the mountain we hit terrible traffic, then there was one single sign that said "All traffic turning around 5 miles ahead." No explanation, nothing. At this point traffic was completely stopped, the highway radio wasn't telling us anything, no more signs of info, so we called my Dad. Eventually he found out online that there were turning back all cars that didn't have 4 wheel drive and snow tires OR have chains on their tires. Since turning back wasn't an option (We were two hours from our destination and about 30 from Missouri) we headed into a little town to buy some.

Long story short: Zach and I in shorts (me in sandals), buying snow chains (which we've never used before) in a random town at the top of a mountain--with snow POURING onto us. Eventually we paid a guy in the parking lot to help us get them on. We finally got over the mountain and below is a picture of Zach taking off the chains, glad the snow had let off and that we were through with the ordeal.

After getting down the mountain we were only about 35 minutes from Davis, CA. We arrived, got our keys, unloaded the car and went to find us some Mexican food. We had promised ourselves a month before we wouldn't eat Mexican til the night we arrived in Davis. Here is a happy Zach, eating some Fajitas after our long, lovely adventure :)

We've already gone on several adventures since--so I will try top post those pics/stories soon :)

Have a wonderful day!

Davis, CA

We arrived in Davis, CA on Monday. It was quite the journey...involving lots of rain and two mini-blizzards. But we are now here in the warm sunshine of the West Coast summer.

I will probably post some pictures of our journey, but for now I thought I would post a few pictures of our apartment. We are subleasing from a college student at UCD. She left the apartment fully furnished and with many odd decorations. Some of the overly strange ones we took down, and after a trip to IKEA and the thrift store I added little bits of my own decorating.

Kitchen!

Living room! The creativity poster probably won't make the decorating cut...

This is one of the things our sub-lessor left. I actually rather like it. Haha. Although, I would hate to be on the ship... The mounted life-size cardboard moose head she had mounted next to it, over the tv, did not make the cut.

Here is the view from our living room. The two giant windows are definitely two of the apartments best features. I love natural light.

Kitchen table. The bottles are from a thrift store, flowers from IKEA, table cloth from Target. I needed color!!!

Bedroom! We bought the bedspread from IKEA. Again...I needed some color.

Bathroom! Rug and shower curtain from IKEA. (And the candle, which smells fabulous!)

So yes, there it is. The apartment complex is very nice, big trees, lots of grass. Little by little we are making the apartment feel more like home. Although nothing can beat our little 1006 back in Kville!

In 20 minutes we are leaving to visit my grandparents. They have the most beautiful garden and they say that things are in full bloom right now! I'm sure I will post some pictures of our visit with them soon :)

Valentine's weekend

**If reading about other people's love/happiness makes you grumpy--do not continue!!**

I had an amazing weekend.

Orignially, I thought I was going to spend it shooting photos for the Index, writing 3 papers and helping cook a college dinner. However, Zach realized on Wednesday that I was slowly filling up my schedule--and he had plans! So he told me early that he bought us train tickets to go to Galesburg, IL. He hated to spoil the surprise early--but I was making too many plans for my weekend!

So after writing 3 papers in about 36 hours, cancelling my photos and getting out of my other responsibilities--I was a free bird!

We left on Saturday morning after a lovely breakfast with our friends Tyler and Elyssa.

The train was awesome! I've ridden the train from St. Louis to Chicago--but this train goes from California to Chicago and was SOOO comfortable. It was a double-decker train, and Zach and I spent almost all our time in this "glass" cart that they have. The windows are huge and the seats look outward, so you just sit there and watch everything go by. It was fantastic!

Zach chose the perfect town. The train dumps off right in Galesburg's downtown area. Useful because Zach and I had only our backpacks and our own two feet to get around. The hotel was also in walking distance.

We stopped by our hotel room to drop off our backpacks. Here is Zach, ready to hit the town!

Zach told me that he had another surprise for me in Galesburg. As we were walking through downtown, he suddenly had me close my eyes. He walked me across the street, then had me look up....such beautiful words did my eyes behold!!

CHOCOLATEFEST!!!!!!!

Oh my goodness....it was fabulous. You bought a ticket, then you could eat as much chocolate as you wanted. I had chocolate mousse pie, cookies, cupcakes, brownies, candies.... Our favorite was the classic chocolate covered strawberries. So good!!

(There was also chocolate covered bacon (see in center of plate). Which Zach liked and I thought was horrific)

We also saw the Historical Societies display (they put on the Chocolatefest)

Ronald Reagan lived in Galesburg for awhile, and here is his gradeschool report card. Haha. Looks like he was a good student! (2nd line)

And even more exciting--Carl Sandburg lived in Galesburg. Here is his Poem "Fog" in his original handwriting!! Ah! I love this poem--little did I know I would get to see an original, handwritten copy.

We walked all around town, went to bookstores, coffee shops, restaurants, shops....

Here is our little friend from the pet store. He was so teeny!

(I do not know why this text is being underlined!)

Galesburg has tons of really awesome architecture and old buildings.

We went out for dinner and had a magician stop by our table. Zach and I don't believe in magic--but this guy was incredible. We do NOT understand how he could do these things. For one trick he had me sign one of the cards in the deck, then he tigly wound a large rubberband around all four corners of the entire deck (which we watched him put my card in). Then he threw the whole deck up against the very high ceiling and my card was stuck to the ceiling! How it got from the middle of a rubberbanded deck to be stuck against the ceiling I will never know. But my card is still there :)

I must also tell of our extremely exciting hotel story.... So, the hotel we stayed in was budget friendly (cheapest in the town) but still fine. We weren't complaining. We went to bed around 12 or 1 and Zach quickly fell fast asleep. I woke up around 3 am and was just lying there awake. I could here trains going by and the muffled tv from next door. Then suddenly, I hear someone at our door and next thing I know I hear it open hard and slam against the metal bar that you can slide across the doorway. Someone had opened our door and was trying to get in!!!! I was shouting, terrified--Zach woke up from a dead sleep and went straight into protective mode. He threw his arm in front of me and started shouting at whatever I was shouting at. Then he thought I might have just been dreaming so he was saying "It's okay Amy! It's alright! We're safe!" To which I shouted "We are NOT alright. SOMEONE IS IN OUR ROOM!!!"

Zach got up and checked the door. At first he thought I might have just heard something else, but sure enough--you could see where the bar had been knocked open from someone trying to come in. We were so freaked out, but had nowhere else to go. So we bolted and barred the door, and put a chair under the handle. Haha. Zach lay awake for 2 hours so that I could fall back asleep. Everything we heard made our hearts skip a beat. In the morning we told the little Indian man who owned the hotel. He asked for a description but I told him it was too dark for me to see. He then opened his cash register, gave us $10 and told us next time we came it wouldn't happen.

Zach and I left. Looking at our green 10 dollar bill in the parking lot we could only laugh. Nothing could make us go back there again!!

So moral of the story: Even when you have the electronic key cards that only YOU are supposed to be able to open your door with--bolt and bar your hotel door. You never know who on the hotel staff might be trying to sneak in and grab your purse. Or what drunk might try to break in!

It was terrifying, and I'm not sure the last time I had that much adrenaline rushing through me--but it makes for a great memory and a great story.

Our second day in Galesburg we went to a coffee shop and studied for awhile, then we walked to Knox college and tried to pretend we were college students there. We spent an hour or two in their awesome library.

The Knox College Library

Zach was super pumped to be at this building. Abraham Lincoln debated slavery here against Stephen Douglas.

We had lunch at a mom and pop place with amazing hamburgers. Later we went to a Creperie for dessert crepes. So amazing. Zach's had ice cream, banan, caramel and fudge. Mine was full of strawberries and had sour cream on top.

This is pretty much what we did. Two days of being together, laughing a lot and exploring Galesburg.

Zach bought me a bag of Twizzler's for the ride home and we sat in the train station chatting and reading the newspaper.

This isn't the train we rode on...but I'm sure the coal/whatever is having a lovely time

This is the view out the train window on the ride home. The ride home went too quickly. The train was gently rocking and the sunset was flying by. We were tempted to just stay on and ride to California.

And this is me. Very happy. Very in love. God has blessed me with such a fabulous man!

Blizzard Aftermath

I never did update on the aftermath of the blizzard. The official total was 14 inches, with drifts that were up to 4-5 feet. You can compare this photo of our house with the one from the previous blog post.

It would have taken forever to shovel our long driveway. Our neighbor Rose and we split the $25 to have a random guy on a tractor come plow our driveway. Another reason why I love Kirskville :)

Here was the aftermath!

I mentioned a possible attempt at bread baking in the last post...which I did attempt. It doesn't look too bad, but it was very dense and tasted terrible!! I think largely due to the fact that I used old, whole wheat flour. Next time I will use white flour!

And to end this post--here is a random picture of people ice fishing. When the ice is thick enough you find people every morning out here on Spur Pond. So awesome. They are very brave. The highs last week were almost all in the single digits, with windchill it was usually below zero!